Sometimes
by FerrisWheeling
Summary: Friends have a knack for just...happening. No matter how much you don't need anybody else, they are always ready to tell you that no man is an island. ONESHOT


_Blublublub. This has been lazing about my writing folder for entirely too long, so I guess you get to read the result of my creativity center suddenly waking up after a months-long dry spell-and after me deciding to never write fanfiction again. But then I changed my mind, as young females have been known to do. _

_Just some things to know about this: set in an AU where trolls have started immigrating to Earth. This has been the case long enough for there to be second and even third generation Earthborn trolls-or Earth-hatched, I suppose. This is a tad heavy emotionally, and strongly alludes to self-harm, so if that stuff doesn't set right with you, skedaddle while you still can._

Who the fuck plays the didgeridoo? And, more specifically, who the fuck plays a didgeridoo on a street corner for money at rush hour? (That's the one and only reason you stop that first day, of course; just stop long enough to satiate your nibbling curiosity and watch this weird kid with beads in his mane make like an Aborigine).

A guitar, a violin, maybe even a horn of some sort, you can understand. Those are reasonable. Those are easy to come by. Those are easily identified by your aural shell. Those don't jut out a good five feet and take up the entire fucking sidewalk.

You could hear that thing from a block away and you immediately wanted to know what it was. You'd never heard anything like it. All weird and flowing, like an underwater creature, like what you always fancied a peyote trip would sound like—you'll never find the last one out because peyote doesn't do shit against your Alternian immune system; peyote is like baby Aspirin when compared to the junk your kind is conditioned to.

It doesn't take you very long to find the kid. Actually, you shouldn't say kid, because he looks a good few years your senior. He's long and stick-thin, sickly really; his hair looks like it could easily turn to face you of its own accord before croaking out 'feed me, Seymour'. His nose is long and crooked, having healed a little funky after a break you'd guess. People are giving him the stink-eye and sometimes snapping at him to get his bum ass out of the public's attention as they tangle themselves over his didgeridoo. He has a hat set out beside him for money, and all he has managed to collect is a Mormon pamphlet and a stick of gum. Above all, though, he simply reeks of sopor and you know he's higher than Ol' Faithful when she blows. Very few humans can recognize the scent of course, so none have reported him to the authorities for illegal drug use; sopor is only legally supplied on Earth as a suppressant for especially troubled troll individuals, and yet, like every other substance that can coax a charming trickle of dopamine at the price of one's life, it has wormed its way onto the black market. A pretty shitty market, you might add, since sopor kills humans without the courtesy of giving them the high of their life first, so the few dealers cater to the minority of a minority.

And yet he looks happy as hell. You have a feeling it isn't just the slime making the world whirly-gig for him, but he is genuinely happy. This shocks you.

From what you can see, all he has in possession is a thin jacket and spotty pajama pants, both too loose, and the contents of that hat. He has no money. He has no roof over his head. He doesn't even have goddamn shoes, and the soles of his feet are covered in calluses and cuts and splinters. You have a steady job and while it does not offer you a brag-worthy paycheck, you have enough money to keep a tidy apartment just big enough for you while struggling through your first year of college. You have running water. You have a cupboard filled with instant noodles and garlic—still not sure where that came from. You have a car. You most definitely have shoes; four pairs in fact, all of them dress, because you are a finely-clothed young troll.

Yet he smiles. You frown. He catches your gloomy eyes and smiles a bit wider, just for you, you special little snowflake. Your frown twists into an all-out scowl.

After this you don't really want to stick around and listen to him. At least, you don't want him to see you listening. The sound of the didgeridoo is more than a tad bit entrancing to you. Yes, you can cautiously admit to yourself that you wouldn't mind to hear it, since he is a rather skilled musician. You just know that if you let him see that you're interested in his music that something will start and you will most definitely not be okay with that something, whatever it turns out to be.

You turn the corner and lean on the wall, huffing angrily. You pretend you are waiting for someone as you listen to the warbling sound ricocheting around the crowded city street, damning that kid for catching your eye. He has no right to interest you, not him, not his stupidass didgeridoo.

What worries you the most is the color of the scabs you saw on the bottoms of his upturned feet. You know that human government has negated blood castes and what not, making it illegal to indulge or deny somebody because of their placement on the hemospectrum. Humans don't do that, especially in the United States; most of them can go on for hours about the wrongs of racism, patriotically blabber in a manner that only the shamed possess. Trolls still, for the most part, adhere to it. So while your freak blood is protected by Earthly law, you will still be judged if you blush, or if you get a nose bleed. One time, in one of the mainly troll populated ghettos, you had the misfortune to be grazed by a speeding car, causing you to stumble over into an inconveniently placed glass bottle. You still have the scars on your lower back. You had let out a very manly, very dignified screech of shock and pain, successfully diverting the crowd's attention from muttering about the nooksniffer who had a serious aversion to the break peddle and turning it to you. They, all being trolls, were frozen for a moment, gaping at the red blood seeping through the back of your coat. A few edged away. They helped you, but that moment full of stares and gasps, of thinking oh shit they're just going to pretend I'm not here, that moment stuck with you.

You know that the caste system will never simply disappear. Your life is all but ruled by it. Your spine straightens and your chest puffs out when the troll next to you blushes any shade darker than a complacent aqua.

That is why that, for the life of you, you cannot fathom why the knicks on the didgeridoo player's feet were crusted around in vivid purple blood. The guy is a highblood, and he spends his time playing an ancient Earth instrument for money. That isn't how highbloods operate. That isn't how they live. Highbloods are gilded mansions and next year's car models, speaking five different languages and telling sadistic tales of all the people they fucked over to get this or that. Highbloods are not, can not, will never be a stringy drop-out of society with a head full of hair that is practically twisting itself into dreadlocks from natural causes. That is just so wrong.

The next day, stomping toward your apartment with your hands fisted into your pockets, you see him on his street corner, hooting away on that glorified tree branch. He smiles at you again benignly and you continue past him without a second glance. You are so damned tempted to turn your head around and watch him as he plays. You don't. You have pride. You don't have the audacity to look a highblood in the face, no matter what he's doing with his life.

Despite all of this, once you round the corner you pause like you did yesterday. This time you pretend to rummage in your pocket, looking for something, and only stay sedentary for a minute or two. That's all you need of the music and then you pretend to give up your search and go on your way.

Many of the ensuing days follow in such a manner, of you going past the musician and rarely giving him more than a cursory, if morbidly curious, glance, then stall once out of sight and listen for a few minutes. You don't want to do this, as it isn't practical at all and you are a studiously practical person, but you do. Each and every day, without exception, you linger around the corner and listen. Each and every day, without exception, the nameless musician smiles at you, because he somehow knows that you like the music. You, a stable young troll dressed in a two-sizes-too-big business coat because you don't have quite enough money to wear tailored clothing—you're so small, sometimes you have to resort to shopping in the woman's department, but only very late at night, and only when you are pathetically desperate for new attire. You, with a job and getting an education, building yourself a still shaky financial foundation when you have lacked one for the better part of your life. You, a busy little bee. You stop every day and listen.

And sometimes, just sometimes, not that you would ever admit this or anything…well, sometimes, that music just about makes you smile.

He is there every day without fail for a month and a half. It takes just that long for you two to finally talk.

It happens on a day when you near his vicinity and you feel anxious because there is no didgeridoo bubbling up to greet you. You've been having a shitty day—one of your coworkers has once again called you out for wearing such formal clothes at a relatively low-key job, and like every other time he was able to make the mild teasing painfully scathing—and you have been looking forward to a minute of city sounds and didgeridoo. Then you get on the block where you have heard the music for the past month and a half, and there is none. Just people walking past you looking more important than you know they are because that's what you do too.

When you get to his designated spot, you find him reclined, relaxed, cradling his instrument in his arms and just taking a breather. You loosen up, knowing that this was inevitable; there was no way he could just play 24/7. No matter how disappointed you are, you are a little bit relieved.

"Hey." You've never heard him speak, you don't turn your head to see if his mouth moved, but you still know it was him. He talked to you. By human etiquette, that means you should reciprocate with a greeting. But you are troll. Human etiquette is one of the stupidest things you've ever encountered, and you have seen a plethora of stupid things in your short life. "Hey, classy motherfucker." He calls again.

Slowly, regretfully, you turn on your polished heel and look at him. His eyelids are droopy, only showing slits of his brilliant orange eyes and too-small pupils. He grins and pats the ground beside him. "You walk by here everyday, and everyday you're all up and scowling and shit. The fuck is with that? You always look like you just ate your own gastrointestinal sustenance processing pouch, bro, and that ain't natural."

You stare at him, the crowd parting around you with minimal snide remarks, too busy being upset over the didgeridoo splayed across their sidewalk to get very upset over one more less out-of-place obstruction. You blush at being spoken to in such a manner by a supposed to be regal highblood. Then you realize that blushing is idiotic to the nth degree, since that will betray your blood color, and even if this highblood lives amongst the rats, he would doubtlessly still turn his nose at such a grotesque shade. In all honesty, any troll would.

He doesn't as much as flinch at your now red cheeks. He pats the ground next to him again. "Come on, motherfucker. I'll talk with you."

You open your mouth and for a heartbeat, honestly consider taking him up. You've never had somebody that you could talk to, not really, not somebody who would take you seriously like it looks he would do. And it doesn't matter how well off you are doing now compared to a few years ago; you have problems, because every semi-sentient piece of shit out there has problems. This guy who plays the didgeridoo like he hasn't a care in the world, who has quite obviously eschewed his birthright—his gift that so many would kill for—of violet blood, this perfect stranger is willing to listen, all because he can see it on your face that you aren't happy.

You teeter forward a little, his smile widens welcomingly, and then you turn back around and bolt in the most shameless manner you can manage. You don't turn back to see the doubtlessly confused look on his face.

That night, you splurge on a tub of Ben and Jerry's and devour the entire thing tangled up in bed, cocooned in blankets and the smell of strawberry cheesecake icecream, watching romantic comedies that you know are horrible but watch regardless.

Next day, when you pass him and he smiles and you round the corner, you almost don't stop to listen. You do, though, and this time the music makes you feel sad and more than a little sick, though that might just be the previous night's icecream binge. You can't tell. All you know is that something mighty ugly is curled in your gut and it won't leave, even after you walk far enough away that you can't hear the music any longer.

In the safety of your white-walled apartment, you stare in your bathroom mirror. It's a little dirty because it is the only thing you own that you always forget to clean it. It works nonetheless and you stare into your reflection's world-weary eyes, ringed with skin tinged by the dark gray of sleep deprivation. Your eyes are the only part about your face that make you look old; they make you look like you watched a bomb drop, and on a bad day it looks like you were the one dropping it. Everything else is almost childishly smooth, without a single scar or wrinkle. You look fifteen years old. You look ill. You might even look like you need a hug.

But Karkat Vantas does not need hugs. You know this as a strong fact. You can count on one hand how many people have hugged you, and every time you detested it. People would think that they were changing you, were helping you. Then you would shake them off with a snarl and burn that bridge and never hear from them again. You have a penchant for ruining relationships.

What the ever-loving fuck are you doing now? You ask yourself this too often.

You are twenty years old. You don't need friends. You don't need hugs either. You have a job and you have money. You are receiving a decent education, even if you haven't a clue what you want to pursue. You don't do drugs. You don't drink. You have a clean bill of health. You haven't cried since you were fourteen. You don't need coward tears. You have no regrets. Not a single one.

You have to leave the bathroom then because you just might end up punching the mirror.

When winter sets in, you wonder what the musician will do. Will he persevere, staking out in the rain and sleet for the sake of his craft? Will he do as any sane person would and seek shelter? Does he even have shelter?

You see him as the air gets nippier. He doesn't put on any extra clothes and sometimes you think you catch him shivering. He keeps his bare feet tucked up into his pants. He still smiles, even if the expression has a noticeable twinge of misery to it.

One day, the clouds finally break open. You slosh down the sidewalk, huddled under your umbrella and avoiding puddles elegantly. You hear the music, and assume he has taken shelter under the alcove of the coffeehouse he plays by. He isn't. He is still slumped under the noisy sky and playing his didgeridoo like a soggy madman. The tune is noticeably less happy than they usually are. Somewhere in the combination of the melancholy music and the sight of him curled up, hair slicked down his shoulders in the rain, water dripping off his witchy nose and eyelashes, stirs compassion in you. You don't like to be sympathetic with others, especially somebody you don't even know. You really, _really_ don't want to.

Gathering all your courage, you crouch down on the exact spot where the highblood suggested you join him weeks before. You don't dare sit down, because these are one of your last pairs of decent slacks; all your pants are too long on your humiliating little legs so their hems are always torn to ribbons quickly. He doesn't seem to mind, wrapping up his little ditty and turn to face you, licking his lips.

"Glad you decided to go and join me here." He grins. You scowl. And the world keeps turning.

"Do you even have a place to fucking stay out here? It would be so pathetic if you got pneumonia or some shit." You grumble, not wanting to sound concerned, because you aren't. You absolutely aren't. You couldn't care less if this crock of shit highblood got worms in his sopor-coated lungs and died in an indiscriminate alley cloaked in last week's newspaper and hobo piss.

"Hot motherfucking damn, bro, that's gotta all be the sweetest thing a fucker's ever said to me."

You mumble testily, continuing to not give two plump damns.

"I don't exactly got a place here, but I got one over there." He points behind you. "Hey, man, you should come over. We could have a motherfucking picnic or some shit."

While his sopor-scented breath makes you cringe, and up this close you can see all the dangerous scars along his lean body, you decide against declining this offer. You remember the last time you refused his company; you don't want to spend another night with 3,000 calories of self-pity and a fake down comforter.

"Fine."

His entire face lights up. "Now ain't this a miracle!" He rocks fluidly to his feet, slinging the didgeridoo over his shoulder and putting his empty and wet collection hat on one of his impala-esque horns. "This way, little man." He grabs your hand with a grip too strong for you to recoil from. Now you have no choice but to follow him, having to trot to keep up with his long, languid strides. He guides you through a couple of streets, down an alley or two, and into a part of the city you generally avoid, and for good reason. Now you almost jog to stay at his side, terrified to get too far away from him. Pale humans with jaundiced eyes peer at you, two trolls openly walking through what is clearly a human slum. Even the bottom rung of society raises its hackles at you lot.

You keep your attention on your guide. He doesn't seem to be bothered by the accusatory glares prickling down your scalp. He seems actually comfortable here. You are a little amazed that he has never been attacked, or so you assume.

He stops you outside of a low, narrow building wriggled between two big brick apartment complexes. A sign above the door says it is an 'authentic Chinese cuisine' and the sign plastered to the front window says it is condemned by this fine city's department of public health. He pushes the door open, as it has neither a lock nor a knob on it, and you are treated to the sight of an abandoned Chinese bistro converted into a home.

You two don't talk as he sets his didgeridoo on a table, next to what look like a saxophone and a mandolin. He flicks on some bare fluorescent bulbs that dangle on the ceiling and are all in various states of going out. Then he sits on the dirty linoleum floor in front of a blanket fort made of old chairs and a couple of the most Gog-awful excuses you have ever seen for quilts. "Welcome to my shack, motherfucker. Want some Faygo? Sopor?"

Now that you look around more thoroughly, you see that the only nutrients in sight are the two aforementioned items: bad soda and drugs.

"Fuck no." You have absolutely no sugar tolerance, so even a simple soda is a bad idea for you, and as for the sopor…that just does things to trolls. You've heard rumors about it and you don't want to touch it.

Your harsh tone does not deter your host. He crawls under the fort and invites you in. Hesitantly, you follow him into a dark cranny full of old pillows and rotting blankets. It is oddly cozy, though, so you settle yourself down as he drags an empty pie tin over to him and licks the rim, seeking the last remnants of congealed sopor. One last time he offers you some, and you shake your head.

You only stay about fifteen minutes before making some bullshit excuse to return home. You barely tell him anything about yourself, other than that you live alone and you are currently a freshman in college. He is more than happy to supply all the details about himself, however.

His name is Gamzee Makara. He thinks the caste system is utter hoofbeast shit. He loves everybody—even you. He almost bashfully admits to having won his fifth grade spelling bee by total accident. You can't believe this guy, and the longer you hang around him the more you don't want to leave.

The logical part of your brains makes you go. This Gamzee is a drugged-up outcast who probably eats stray cats and keeps their bones in the dishwasher. You can't associate with somebody like that. So you leave and the moment you step back out into the rain, your umbrella grudgingly unfolding over your head, you miss him. You don't want to but you miss his malnourished ass. You think of him all the way through the slums, even as your scalp prickles, and you think of him when you get back to your apartment, pants and shoes soaked. You have never met anybody, human or troll, that is even comparable to him.

You don't condone liking people, but it seems that it is happening anyway. You look forward to seeing him tomorrow a little too much.

Except he isn't there the next day, or the day after that. Your stomach hurts at the thought that something happened to him. No matter how much you snap at yourself for feeling this way, you cannot help it.

As the third day draws to a close, you duck into the coffeehouse and go up to the barista. You have seen her several times through the window but have never actually talked to her. She seems alright. For a human.

"You know what happened to the guy playing the didgeridoo out there?" You ask, carefully keeping your speech profanity free, if still grumpy. She raises a single gold-blond eyebrow at you, wiping out the inside of a cup with a wet rag.

"Sir, we're a coffeehouse, not an information kiosk." She says smoothly.

Profanity filter: off.

"I don't fucking care. What happened to him?" You demand.

Now she smirks at you, absolutely unruffled by your bared fangs and murderous glare. Cripes, this woman is unfazeable. Slowly, she washes and dries the cup she is holding, keeping you seething and at the edge of your proverbial seat. Other customers nag you to get out of the way, and then nag at her to make their drinks faster and stop washing the cups. With a single glance she shuts them all up, then turns to you.

"If you must know, he was carted off to a hospital." She starts making a drink, finished acknowledging you. Like that short snippet is supposed to satiate your curiosity. It does nothing but make you want to know more. Not that you're worried.

"What the fuck do you _mean_, caffeine-crone?" You snarl, throwing in a derogatory remark in hopes of breaking her calm. It does no such thing. She finishes up the drink, taking her merry time, before she deems you worthy of further information disclosure.

"When he came here, it looked like he had fallen face-first into a pile of steak knives." She shrugs, starting the next drink on the order list.

"What?" You shriek, loud enough to make everybody in the small coffeehouse swivel and look at you. Your hands are curled tight around the counter and you are leaning so far forward that you have all but rocked off of your toes. She once again fixes you with an insufferable look as the speakers start crooning out a Tom Waits song. To the background of doggish soul, she talks again.

"I don't know why, nor do I know how. All I know is that there was blood everywhere and they took him away in an ambulance. Now, if you do not mind, I have a double-tall soy latte to whip up here." She nods at you, the universal signal for get-your-neatly-dressed-ass-out-of-my-sight-this-instant. You oblige, mind reeling.

In a stupor you return to your apartment building and get in your rusted pickup truck. You drive to the nearest hospital and when you get there, you do not know why, but you ask a woman behind a desk if they have one Gamzee Makara in their custody. You don't curse, you don't sound angry, you just give the woman a name and she gives you a room number. You nearly lose yourself in the winding white corridors of the hospital but eventually find the room. It is very large, with several beds crammed into it, and if the desk woman is to be believed, Mister Makara will be in one of them.

He is, and he makes this publically known by waving and calling out to you as you scan the crowd. "Hey, bro, how'd you get here?" You pinpoint his location at the end of one of the rows of beds, near the large bay windows. He is sitting up with more than half of his face bandaged. He is smiling dopily, his one visible eye heavy-lidded and lanced with purple veins at the corners.

You march over to him feeling righteously furious for no good reason. You often get mad when other people break through your shell and make you worried about them, or, Gog forbid, care for them. You are loathe to care for another living being, especially Gamzee, since you scarcely know him and he is a sopor junkie and homeless and just lets things slip by without so much as a blink.

"What the fuck is this?" You demand, pointing at his bandages. A passing nurse gives you a dubious look but does nothing beyond that.

"Aw, just a little of this and that. Nothing to get jumpy over, man, just a few scratches." He shrugs, flicking the bandages. He doesn't even wince.

"The girl in the coffeehouse said you were bleeding all over." You growl.

Again, he shrugs. "Eh. Lalonde always goes and exaggerates shit like that. She likes gross details and she likes to freak people the fuck out. She's just looking for a reaction from a motherfucker, dig? It wasn't as bad as she said." Something seems imperceptibly off about him when he says this. His voice is just slightly tensed and you have a strong feeling that he's lying.

But whatever. You, Karkat Vantas, do not give a jubilant fuck about how serious his face got scratched up. Neither do you care who caused it. (Oh, if it were any of those hollow-faced men you saw when you went to his place, you would just kill them. At least fantasize about it). In fact, you do not care about Gamzee Makara at all, you do not care that he is hiding something about his hospitalization, you do not care enough to ask why he has been in here for the better part of three days if those scratches were nothing to worry about. The only reason that you have even decided to grace him with your curmudgeonly presence is...you were just…sort of wondering what became of the scarecrow outside the coffeehouse.

Words fail you. You are furious. Gamzee is lock-tongued and lax; he isn't giving you any information. You turn your back and storm out of the large room, promising yourself you are never going back.

At the door into the confusing hallways you are temporarily blocked by some troll in a wheelchair. One of his ridiculously long horns catches your sleeve and near rips it. You hiss at him, turning around to glare at him as he blushes a deep orange-brown (fucking lowbloods…wait, what are you even saying, you freak of hemoglobin?) and stumbles over an apology. It's depressing, really, and you have had enough depressing shit for a lifetime.

You are about to turn back around and march out the door when, out of the corner of your eye, you see a nurse at Gamzee's bedside. She's peeling up his bandages, to redress or check in or whatever it is that nurses do. You pause a moment and feel a sick stirring inside. What you glimpse under those bandages is worse than what the barista—Lalonde, apparently—made you believe with her curt steak knife comparison. You see three long, deep, and jagged cuts diagonally scrawled across his thin face.

You rush out of the room and out to your car, curling up in the driver's seat and shivering a little. It's from the winter air. Not those gashes. Gore doesn't bother you, never has. Everybody has blood. You don't care if it spills a little, or even a lot. It doesn't matter for what reason it is spilled either. But, just out of aloof curiosity, you wonder who would do that to Gamzee? That is a bonified hate crime; you could practically smell it. Who did it, and why?

You get an answer the second time you visit the hospital, two days after your first visit. You go into the room where Gamzee should be and he isn't there in his bed, not even his chart, so you snag a passing nurse.

She says he's been transferred to the psych ward and is off in a clack of thick heels before you can ask why. You don't let yourself think about what this implies for too long. They probably just figured out about his sopor addiction or something. That's a case for a psych ward, right? You hope so.

It takes a half hour, but you find the psych ward. All the doors have locks on them.

You don't have to ask a woman behind a desk for his location this time, because he finds you first. He's walking down the hall in papery hospital pajamas, pushing that troll in a wheelchair who ran into you before. He blanches a little when he sees you, ears tipped downwards.

The bandages are off of his face. You can see the gashes in their full glory, tied shut with zigzag stitches. The skin around them is puckered and too dark. They stretch from his left temple across his forehead, his eye, his nose and coming to an end on his right cheek.

"So great to see you; thought you weren't gonna visit me again!" He trots away from the wheelchair kid and hugs you. You hiss and shove him off. What right does he have to come up to you and hug you, like he knows you or something? Atrocious.

"Tell me why the fuck you're in the crazy house." You demand in a low snarl. He smiles, shrugging innocently.

"Well, fuck. The moment the doctors figured out what happened, they said I needed to be here."

"What…happened?" You grind out angrily.

"Gave these babies to myself!" He points at the cuts, still smiling. "Used a pretty little razor, has a fucking abalone handle. Fancy as hell, right?"

"You cut your own face up?" You echo. He nods like a happy puppy.

"They've been up and giving me pills here since I don't have my sopor. I told them I get weird without sopor, man, and you bet they believed it!"

"Are you for real?" You yell quietly. All he does is smile, this time a little more confusedly. You shove past him and stalk off into the winding halls of the hospital.

It is one thing for a human to cut themselves up. A lot of humans do it, if you hear right. They don't have to try hard, what with their soft skin that all too easily breaks. Trolls, though…trolls are tough. Trolls don't start spurting blood every which way after being poked with a knife. You shiver at the idea of how much force Gamzee must have needed, how much determination and faith in the idea that this was the right thing to do, to be able to open himself up like that. Even with a sharp razor, he would have had to work hard to draw blood. You would rather he got beaten up. Lynch mobs do the darndest things, and hate is easier to deal with than such shameless displays of self mutilation. And he seems so happy…

You wind up in some sort of healing garden in the center of the hospital. It's inside the building, kept steaming and quiet. Muted trance music plays from speakers hidden under the plants. You slump onto a bench and put your face in your hands. What is even going on here? You don't have a particularly good answer for that and it bothers you so much. You barely know this guy. He shouldn't mean anything to you, shouldn't be worth anything. You have never even had a solid conversation with him.

All you know is that he lives in a condemned building, he's a proud drug addict, he plays a mean didgeridoo and he gave you a smile every day he was sitting on that street corner. Which, you hate to admit, is kind of more than most people have ever done for you. That little smile that kept you hooked around the corner, listening to that obnoxious thing and occasionally nodding your head along to the beat.

What does it all mean? Gamzee plays good music and cuts himself up. You are desperate to do something with your life and shouldn't care about him. Then again, he shouldn't have smiled at you. It's his fault. This whole stinking mystery is his fault.

It takes too long, but you do drag your sorry ass back to the psych ward and hunt Gamzee down again. He's sitting on the floor next to the wheelchair kid.

"When do you get out?" You demand. He looks up at you and tugs you down onto the ground to join them. You repress a dismayed shudder at the thought of what has desecrated these old floors and that it is now all over the seat of your pants.

"Don't really know. They wanna keep me around."

"And you should, uh, you should really stay. They're nice here, and they'll help you." The wheelchair kid urges. You can tell that these two have gone over this before by the pleading, slightly worried tone of his voice.

"I'll give you a place to stay besides that shitty restaurant." You grumble. Oh damn. You didn't mean that. You didn't mean that at all! But you can't quite bring yourself to take it back, especially when his face brightens up like an overzealous Christmas tree on a power surge.

"Heh, aw man, that'd be a miracle!" He claps his hands once. "You mean it, bro? You'd actually let a nookpoker like me live with you?"

Now is the part where you jump to your feet and victoriously crow, 'April fools!' despite it being the middle of September. Now is when you put aside all this stupid compassion toward your fellow troll and let him in on the big mean joke, tell him you were kidding, and return to your apartment and live a normal life and never see this nutcase again. Now is when you don't let somebody in your life who might actually give two cents about you.

"I guess."

You end up giving him your address and apartment number, and a day later he's knocking at your door. He has a ratty backpack full of his possessions, holding all three of his instruments awkwardly and grinning at you over the tarnished gleam of his saxophone. He dumps them all on your spotless white couch, looking around the apartment and letting out a low whistle.

(He whispers to you over a dinner of chicken noodle soup from a can that the hospital staff doesn't know he's gone. Says he slipped out because he doesn't like the pills they were feeding him. Says sopor works so much better.)

At first, he drives you a little bit nuts. Actually, he drives you nuts forever, but especially at first. You keep your apartment immaculately clean. The white tile floors are always swept, only marred by a kitchen table with a single chair, your couch with a lamp by it, the coffee table/television throne, and your small bed. The walls are bare. No family photos, no memories, no shelves with knickknacks. You are a clean person. Gamzee is not. He leaves his clothes everywhere, empty pie tins pile up under the table, you trip over his stupid mandolin on midnight trips to the bathroom.

He tells you things you don't exactly want to hear too. He tells you how each of his cuts, now placated purple scars, were repentance for an unrepeatabley disturbing thing he has done—thank whatever merciful deity that he doesn't tell you what he actually did. He shows you the abalone-handled razor he did it with; it's ancient, probably from the 1950s. He even tells you that he is the direct descendant of a Subjugglator, which just about makes you kick him to the curb right then and there. He reassures you that his sopor acts as a suppressant to his natural instincts, that you shouldn't worry, and if he ever gets too creepy to just lock him in the bathroom for a few hours until he gets himself settled down.

Not to mention that his sleep schedule is exquisitely screwed—it is an incredibly petty thing for you to get riled up about, especially in light of everything else, but you do so anyways. He never sleeps for more than four hours at a time, taking several catnaps throughout the day. He also entitles himself to your bed, something you resent with your entire being; every time he sleeps there, your comforter ends up smelling like sopor and Faygo, a scent that soon leeches to ensconce your entire apartment. You are so glad that you don't know anybody that you would have to explain this to. His horns, longer and sharper than your own embarrassing nubs, tear your apart any pillow they come in contact with and he always forgets this. By the end of the first week of you sharing an apartment, your bedroom is a mess of pillow shreds and white feathers. You would need an industrial strength vacuum cleaner to save this glorious squalor.

He still goes out every day to that street corner by the coffeehouse to play his didgeridoo and if he ever earns money, he gives half of it to you for the rent bill. When you walk past him on your way home from work, he follows, taking with him whatever crap got tossed in his collection hat that day. From time to time, you walk up to find the Lalonde girl leaning against the wall above him while she's on her break. She always has a bitingly sarcastic comment reserved for you, and you always have your middle finger reserved for her. You guess she's still an okay person, though.

Living with Gamzee is either the best or the worst thing that you have ever let happen to you, and quite possibly both at the same time. After about a month of living with him, you come to the horrifying conclusion that you give a rat's ass about him, and that he maybe helps balance you out. He calms you down, he keeps your politically incorrect mouth socially acceptable, he reminds you that there is more to life than moping around your abysmally pristine apartment when you aren't slaving away in at your job under the malevolent eye of a superior. He forces you to go out with him and putz around town, discovering his miracles all over the place—he really likes miracles, but you fail to get how finding things like a dandelion growing between the sidewalk cracks is even enticing, least of all miraculous.

Also around your one month anniversary of grudging coexistence, you have to realize something. Not realize something in the forefront of your mind, or necessarily accept it, but the thought lingers about your synapses nonetheless: you weren't looking for a moirail, but you think you might have found one.


End file.
